Lent 4:  Love Sends Us Out and Love Brings Us Home

Sermon preached by the Reverend Patricia Farris

March 21, 2004

Scripture:  2 Corinthians 5:16-21 and Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

According to the church calendar, today we have arrived at the fourth Sunday in Lent.  With only two more to go before Holy Week, we're well past the halfway mark on this Lenten journey.  “Laetere Sunday,” this one was called in the days when each Sunday had a Latin name corresponding to the first words of the Psalm or at times the Epistle reading appointed for that day.  Laetere.  Rejoice, from the Psalmist:  "Be glad in God and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!"  This Sunday is an anticipation of Easter in the midst of Lent.  It is a celebration in the midst of the traditional fasting and more somber reflection of these days.

So this is Lent, and this is Easter, too, mixing together the business of dying and the business of living, as we Journey Inward + Journey Outward.  Choosing, choosing, choosing, over and over again, the way of life.  Journeying in and through our lives, noting the places where we are dead to our true selves, where our souls are not bearing fruit, where we are lost and far away, where we have cut off the life-sustaining relationships that connect us to one another and to God.

The business of dying and the business of living is the raw material out of which our days are constructed, the on-going drama of learning to be human, of learning how to love, of discovering who we really are and might become, of experiencing again and again the power of God's love to restore us to new life when we were convinced it just was no longer possible.  Today we hear an ancient parable, one of Jesus' most familiar stories, about life restored, the story we call “The Prodigal Son.” 

Jesus the preacher has an interesting congregation for this one.  Evidently, the tax collectors and the sinners were there, listening.  That is, the ones who had been told they were bad and unworthy, those who probably felt they were on some level, so bad as to not even belong there listening.  And there, too, were the self-righteous religious types who were probably quite convinced that they were not sinners at all, that they were right with God and God with them, and, in fact, they were trying to say that those other undesirables really had no place in the pews.

As I imagined that congregation, I wondered if they sat on opposite sides of the Sanctuary, like the bride's party and the groom's party at a wedding.  Sinners were on one side, righteous were on the other.  The goats and the sheep.  Those on the left hand and those on the right.  I wondered whose faces would look eager to hear the message...I wondered which side might be weeping.  I wondered if Jesus the preacher could see which were about the business of dying and which about the business of living?

But then I thought it might be more like a regular congregation and they'd all be mixed together, the sinners and the righteous. You couldn't tell by looking, and maybe there were even some who had at different times found themselves on both sides of the line, and so they came, all of them needing to die to something inside in order to be able to embrace the new life offered to them all.

So Jesus told this congregation of sinners and righteous a story about a man who had two sons, one of each, the sinner and the righteous, but a story in which, after a while, it was hard to tell which was which, and the father seems to understand that there's room enough for both in that home, and that there would be feasting enough for them all.

There was a man who had two sons.  The younger one asked for his share of the inheritance before his father even died.  His father, who might have said "No" said instead "OK" and gave him the money.  For some reason we're not told, this younger son felt a need to go faraway from that father and that home and that older brother and from everybody he knew and who knew him.  Until the money ran out, what a great time he had, “dissolute living,” the text says, “a life of debauchery,” says another translation; another called it “riotous living.”

But when the money ran out and a famine came over the land, he began to starve along with everyone else.  He hired himself out in the lowest of jobs, feeding pigs, and when he was hungry enough to realize that he wanted to eat the same pods the pigs were eating, the text says:  “He came to himself.”  It's what AA and other 12-step groups call "hitting bottom."  It could get no worse, and he faced the choice between the business of dying and the business of living.  In that moment, “he came to himself.”

The words mean that he remembered his true self.  That is, he repented--there's that word again--meaning, he turned around, he literally "changed his mind" and put on a new one, which was actually his old one, as he remembered who he was.  His father's son; he was still his father's son.

In remembering, he could return to the father he had taken for granted and hurt so deeply, not expecting much more than the food provided to his father’s servants.

Ah, but how much more awaits him!  Sensing his return, his father runs out while he is still far off, runs out to greet him, to embrace and kiss him.  His father is filled with compassion and joy.  Dwelling not on the past, his father celebrates his homecoming with robe, sandals, ring, and feast, exclaiming:  "for this son of mine was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found!"

This is the only parable, the only time in the Scripture, actually, when Jesus uses the word for "resurrection" and "and is alive again."  We have here the movement from death to life, from the business of dying to the business of living, a movement so mysterious to us when we place it solely in the context of physical death, but so compelling for us when we place it in the context of relationships restored, of bitterness put aside, of sin forgiven, of coming to our senses and starting over.  The one who was dead is alive to his true self, and alive again to his father, and they feast together.  This is resurrection!  Rejoice!

Ah!  Easter!  New life!  We might stop there, but the story goes on so that the whole congregation is embraced, not just the sinners, you see, but the righteous as well, in the person of the older brother.  Bitter, jealous, angry, spiteful--he adds the line about his younger brother being with prostitutes!  “I've been here all along,” he whines.  “I've been good.  I've never disobeyed you.  I've worked as hard as your slaves--and you never gave a feast for me!”

He's so angry that, if you look closely at the text, you'll notice that he does not even call his father "Father."  HE breaks the relationship now, out of bitterness and his sense of entitlement.  The older son becomes the prodigal.  He leaves his father emotionally, distancing himself and denying his father’s love.  We are left to wonder if this son will ever “come to himself” and turn around.

In this story, it is the father manages to recast it all as the choice between the business of dying and the business of living.  He chooses life.  

You see, the father's acceptance of his younger son does not mean rejection of the older one.  The father insists on calling both "Son."  The father insists on relationship with both and he reminds them both that they are still “brother” to one another.  The father does the hard work of reconciliation, working to create salvation--wholeness, healing, restoration of relationship and covenant, out of brokenness and acrimony and pain.  "Son,” says the father, now to his older, bitter child, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.  This brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.  For this, we celebrate and rejoice!"

This is a story of how God loves us.  Whether we're like the older son or the younger son, whether in this moment we feel more like the sinner or the righteous one, whether we know our need of healing or are more in touch with our gifts and strengths, whether our relationships feel good and healthy or are in need of restoration and reconciliation . . . wherever we are today, there is a place for us, for all of us, for the whole of who each of us is, in the embrace of God’s love.  The love of God is deep and wide and broad enough for both sons, big enough for the parts of our hearts that reflect a bit of each, deep enough for each of us and for all of who we are.

Now, I know for a fact, because several of you have told me, that you don’t like this parable because it’s not fair.  And you know what?  You’re right.  It’s not fair, thank God.  God’s love isn’t “fair” at all.  God’s love is not measured in human categories.  God’s love reaches out to embrace that selfish, reckless, heartless no-good jerk of his younger son.  God’s love reaches out to embrace his selfish, self-centered, condescending older son as well.  Not fair at all.  Neither is particularly entitled to love by their actions. God loves them anyway.  God makes a place for them anyway.   That means there’s always a place for each of us. 

The Lenten summons to repent, to turn around, to be made new, includes the invitation to become part of the reconciling love of God.  It's an invitation we'll receive from God in Christ Jesus over and over again as we go through life, as we move through times of sin and brokenness, and through times of holy living, back and forth in this wilderness, drawn by the sure magnetic love of God drawing us close, calling us home.

Paul said it:  From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view...if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation--man, woman, boy, girl--that person is a new creation.  The old things passed away--look, new things have come.

That means us, in repenting, in turning around; we become a new creation through the great, great love of God.   The invitation this morning to each of us, whether we’re the younger son or the older son of this story, or some of both, the invitation is to receive this love, this healing love.  Receive it and let it heal the hurts in our hearts.  Receive it and let it reconcile us to those we have cast aside.  Receive it and know ourselves as God’s beloved Child.  Receive it and remember that we are all brothers and sisters to one another.  Receive it, this great, great love, and let it make us new.

Rejoice.